Towards Individual Finger Movement Detection Using EMG Sensors Placed on Forearm

This paper presents as a proof of concept the methodology for the detection of movement of individual fingers (thumb, index, and middle finger) using EMG sensors placed on two muscles on the forearm of one person. Two MyoWare Muscle sensors are used together with an Arduino UNO microcontroller board that works as a data acquisition system to collect electromyography signals from muscles. These signals are then transformed using short-time Fourier transform with the aim of having the signals in the time-frequency domain. After filtering, the highest peaks in both signals are identified in realtime to detect the movement of an individual finger. Finally, the signals for the thumb, index, and middle fingers were identified as an initial step towards the development of a prosthesis in which each finger will have its own movement in future work.